So all the magic happens in here; my own little creative space where I have my ‘Rebecca Wall’ and my sewing machine and laptop and a view of the garden.

I got the idea for my Rebecca Wall from seeing book pages and sheet music used as quirky wallpaper in shops like Urban Outfitters and in my friend Katy’s Mum and Dad’s attic room. The problem was I didn’t know which book to use, and it felt like sacrilege to tear pages from a book. Then I noticed an old battered copy of Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’. It had to be.

I totally underestimated how many pages it would actually take to paper the old chimney/alcove wall in my room, tearing at random to get a good mix of page numbers and of the story. I just used spray mount to stick them up, moving in slightly off rows like deranged brickwork. And despite having to drive to the 24-hour Tesco to buy more of it, it really didn’t take long at all.

It’s been a year now and each of the pages is still holding up. The pages are an off-pink like beige or buff or strawberry-caramel but not quite…perhaps more like the peachy-pink of the Financial Times? It tones well with the mint green of the rest of the walls, and I made sure that I kept the opening page with the immortal line:

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…”

for a prominent, mid-height position. I can read it from my desk whenever I am daydreaming or need inspiration. It worked out pretty well.

Another obsession is keys. Old keys. Rusty keys. Big keys. Stubby keys. Thin keys. Tiny keys. They are somehow mystic and mythical; holding the secret of life in their buffed out metallic rustiness. I bought a selection from the Antik-und Flohmarkt in Berlin last year, and hung them at random on my Rebecca wall with the lucky horseshoe I bought in Prague and some wooden vintage-print cut outs of keys. It works. It’s me.